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Somewhere in my life, I went wrong. Birth? From the moment I was born, my personality was forming. Maybe even before then, I don’t know. But what I have is called Borderline Personality Disorder. My personality somehow became skewed. Somehow, a part of my soul didn’t form. At least that’s how it feels anyway, although they’d never tell me that. I am very happy to know I have it, that I’m not an alien dropped off from another unknown planet for God’s amusement. “Here, let’s see how you fare in the world called Earth, I will quite enjoy this”, God hasn’t said. At least not to me. Most of my life I spent trying to fit in. When one has no identity, it makes it very easy to blend myself into whatever situation I find myself in. I could be anyone, anyone I chose to be at the moment to gain the approval and affections of those near. And I did. It worked so beautifully and I prided myself on the fact I have a couple of friends in each category, or “clique” as they called them in school, but didn’t belong to one specific group. At the time I felt it was an asset. Then my world began crumbling. I realized I could no longer conform to the identity of others. I was losing it. “ Ha Ha, they’re coming to take me away...”. What does one do when her entire personality structure is built on the identity and wishes of other people, then suddenly it doesn’t work anymore. Did I grow my own personality then?? I wish I could say that I had. Emptiness. Day after day, week after week, I felt, WAS, empty. Breathing became unbearable. Not the actual experience of breathing, the entire EXISTING part. I didn’t want to do it. As a baby, I was very cute and cuddly. I knew the best way for me to receive love was to continue to be cute and cuddly, then I would be adored. Then I began becoming my own person. Only one person around me liked that, my sister Michelle. The rest of the family decided I was to continue to be cute and cuddly. Then I got fatter. And the gap between my teeth became wider. And cuddly I was no more. Then the spankings came. Oh, not the ordinary spankings when one misbehaves. The kind that leave you with a lasting impression, an impression that not only did I not know what I did wrong, but my very sense of being was a hindrance to the lives of others. So I wondered. Hmm. I laugh, I get spanked. I cry, I get spanked, I play, I get spanked. I become angry, agitated or upset, I get spanked. Mom carried the leather belt around her neck because I didn’t stop existing. School wasn’t much better. I blew my snotty nose on my sleeve. I hate using Kleenex, that somehow once I use it, I’m conforming to the societal demands that I am a normal person. There was nothing normal about me. So I didn’t use the Kleenex and instead used the sleeve of my puffy nylon coat. (It was the 70’s, that was the style). On a report card, I actually got graded down for that. I still have a difficult time using Kleenex. It’s a waste of money as far as I’m concerned. Now I use TP. From the age of birth, I’ve had a knack for putting on a face. I looked through my childhood photos and there it was, the big happy smile and bright eyes. I could have gone through the worst of something, and then the camera comes out and you’d never know it. I am the only one who can recognize it. The other side I attempt to show everyone, yet inside I feel as though I am a piece of tape, there but totally clear, transparent. As if other people can look through me like I have no substance. Then at 14, I ran away from home. I had sex for the first time. Then the second time. All in one day. I was sore and tired. But I was finally a Woman. I didn’t see what all the fuss was about anyway. Most of the experience was just unsanitary but at least I knew that I existed to someone else, even for just a few moments. Rebellion in my family wasn’t too much of a big deal because existing was rebellion. So I was a bad girl, skipping school, smoking pot in the abandoned water slides. Even harassing authority figures. There was a tall, skinny male librarian at my junior high school. Near Christmas-time, on the one rare day I did go to school, I wore a bell on my shoelace. He told me to take it off, it was disturbing the others in the library. So I purposefully left it on. I defied him. Someone other than mom or dad. A big day for me. He kicked me out of the library. So I went and smoked more pot. Ironically, he was the person who, on a separate occasion, witnessed me skipping school. He reported me to the principal and I was suspended. Good. Then I didn’t have to attend school at all. I never learned that much anyway. Graduation barely happened at all for me. Because of my terrible grades and low attendance, I graduated by the grace of a teacher who gave me a D+ rather than a D-. He said he didn’t want me back in his class the following year. So I graduated. Being me in school has been torturous. Being me period is not easy. For a borderline, as with any adult child of a dysfunctional family, surviving life can be more a question of the morality of suicide than of getting the bronze cow. God wouldn’t let me enjoy my existence but He wouldn’t let me die either. I tried. I tried to die in 1995, after a horrible experience at a marriage. And money was non-existent. Still. But I just laid. Pill after pill after pill I popped. Over 60 pills of really strong stuff. Nothing. Just laid. Every few minutes I would have a little convulsion like my body was shutting down. I would say to myself...this is it. The end. This is what it will feel like to die. Nothing. Just the look of the ceiling plaster above my head. Then Michelle came home. I told her what happened and she insisted we go to the hospital. I said ok, because I knew she would drag me if I didn’t, and I knew she could because I was so weak. That would be embarrassing. I said ok, on one condition. That we eat Chinese food first. So we went out to a restaurant and ate Chinese food. As if the entire day hadn’t been spent attempting to murder myself. To the others in the restaurant, I’m sure we both appeared completely sane and reasonable. I learned to hide so well. People have a hard time believing I have a problem mentally. I know numbers very well. Have an excellent memory with numbers. I know who the president is, what day it is (usually), and can count backwards from 100 to 0 in increments of 7. The hospital staff brought up all my Chinese food. I am thinking, hey, I spent $8 on that meal, what are you doing. Then the charcoal. Then the vomiting. All night long. Vomiting like every minute. I’ll never die by pills. No follow up care required. I am safe and A-Ok. I go home. The emptiness doesn’t go away. So I decide to call around for counselors. I found one. The nightmare of mental health treatment begins. First the diagnosis. Depression. Hmm. Then the meds. I never understood what they meant by “meds”. “Have you taken meds before” or “What about meds”? I’m thinking, what the hell is this word you use, “meds”?? They clarify, “Medications”. Oh. No, No history with medication. Maybe Tylenol. Something like that. They meant psychotropic medications. I didn’t even know there were psychotropic medications. Especially not ones with my name on it. And so the treatment began. You know, people are funny. They really thought that pills and counseling was all I needed. And they made me believe it, too. Then I got to go into the hospital on an inpatient basis because whatever they were doing wasn’t working. Or maybe I wasn’t working. Very damaged, very broken, and everyone I knew was out of super-glue. Life for a week and a half in the hospital was fun. I actually laughed and bitched and cried and it was all ok. Then they thought I got better, or maybe my insurance ran out, I still don’t know, so they sent me home. I didn’t adjust. At the time I was living with Mom and Michelle. With pets. In a cramped 2 bedroom apartment. With roaches. So I went to live at a group home called Karis House. Worse. If there were a hell on earth, it would’ve been there. Most of the people there were really crazy. Like, way gone. I’m not like this, am I, I asked myself? The boyfriend I met in the hospital encouraged me to stay with him. So I did most of the time. I had to sweep and mop floors every night at the Karis House. I waited till after 10pm because it was cooler. I hated that job. Every night. These people were really dirty with their shoes. I was in bed with Chris one night, the love of my life, and remembered I didn’t do the floors. He said, “Forget it for tonight”. I said no, I must. It’s my job.” So I got out of his warm bed and went to the Karis House and swept and mopped the floors. He felt sorry for me so he went with me and helped. He was just like that. My short-term disability at my job came in handy. I could not work. I could not be around normal people anymore. Whatever coping skills I had previously used (whether healthy or un-healthy) no longer worked for me. I tried going back but a pollyanna at work, a devout Christian, told me to smile. I felt like punching her. I said to her, “What if I don’t feel like smiling”? I really needed to hear a sane answer. She went away to her desk and brought me a package of Sixlets. You know, those little chocolate candy things? She said maybe this’ll make you smile.” So I said thank you, but didn’t smile. Fall 1995 was a time for love. I loved being around Chris. Not just because he was screwed up like me but because he looked at me when I talked. He looked as if he were listening. He HEARD me. And sex was great. I was so in love with him. He died on December 12, 1995 from an overdose of Seconal and Valium. I told everyone he died of complications with epilepsy. Although I know in my heart it was unintentional, a part of me wonders why he would have let himself get so confused about the dosage of meds. He wasn’t suicidal. He told me. I believed him. But I figure if he really loved me he would’ve wanted to get better. He didn’t. Life fell apart. Again. The second hospital stay was a nightmare. A different hospital. Different rules. I was not allowed to smoke. You just DON’T tell a crazy person they are in lock up and refuse them their cigarettes. I flipped so they gave me some Nicorette gum. The diagnosis of Bipolar didn’t convince me I had it. I knew I’d never been manic, and told them so. They wouldn’t listen, after all, I was a crazy person right. They’re the ones with the degrees. Then I said I was all better and convinced them I was a changed person. Then I got out so I could smoke. I’ve never been in lock up since. Things got from bad to great to worse than ever. The doctors in my world had me try all the meds out there, in almost every combination. Nothing worked. Counselors came and went. All the while, I was juggling my reputation with my family. Not my immediate family because they already knew I was messed up. The family who doesn’t know me but wants to know of me. Just enough for them to base an opinion or judgment on then leave them to their cushy little life. I tried forcing Mom to remain silent to them, not giving them information they could use against me, or for them. She did her own thing. She must’ve had a good reason. But her reason kept bringing more shame to me and I just gave up trying to convince her otherwise. I got my own apartment and was finally a family. It felt like home after I spent $25 on a 25” console TV. Not only a TV but a piece of furniture too. How could I go wrong. For a few months I seemed to exist fairly normally. The friendships I had made were superficial and nearly intolerable on a long-term basis. (Long term was more than an hour at a time). The only thing new with that was that I had a couple friends to speak of. I even seemed to hold down a part-time job selling coupon books door to door. The time came when I could no longer show a positive side of me, I could no longer let people see only what they needed and wanted. My spiral downward was swift and immediate. Michelle moved in with me because I couldn’t get off the couch. Just to lay there staring at nothing at all was all I could manage, if not for sleep. Of course I quit my job but they kept encouraging me to go back. With good reason. I’d only shown them a side of me that didn’t authentically exist. The best of what I didn’t have. Of course they wanted me back. All the while, the coping skills I’ve used to get by fairly easily were, again, no longer working. The medications I took seemed to manage a specific symptom, but I knew there was still something wrong. With me. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I knew all was not right. Michelle and I moved in with mom into a mobile home. Big mistake. Too much dysfunction in one house. When I wasn’t bursting out in angry rages, I slept. And gained weight. Lithium caused me to want to eat. All the time. I gained 70 pounds. I looked terrible. So I cut off all my hair. I really hated my hair. They say a persons’ hair reflects how they feel about themselves. It was a disgrace and brought shame to me. So off it went. In a rage. Against myself. The first real violence towards myself that didn’t result in hospital and cause pain. After, I looked like a butch. Really bad. I was fat and nearly bald. Not only that but something was causing an outbreak of pimples. I was into the occult, even having been bred and raised in Sunday School. I tried contacting Chris through the Ouija board and even tried selling my soul to the devil. I guess someone upstairs may have been watching over me because I read a book that changed how I saw evil. I recommitted myself to God and read the Bible daily. For hours. I was obsessed, figuring the more I knew about the Bible, the more I’d know about God, thus the more pleasant He would treat me in life. It doesn’t work that way because things got only worse. I was living the life of a fake. At church I was miss goody-goody, trying to be obedient and please everyone and within myself I was in a rage against myself and everyone around me. Trying to control it almost made it worse. For some reason, mom was the target of most of my anger, although I didn’t know why. Something had to change when she was washing dishes one night and I picked up a butcher knife to stab her. Of course I couldn’t. Too many consequences. I lived my entire life by consequences. She didn’t know. Our weekly family meetings were designed to bring us closer yet maintain healthy boundaries. Somewhere in the week we’d lose it all. Then another meeting. Sometimes we required emergency meetings. Mom was unhappy. She had the pain in her eyes even worse than when I was growing into my own person. I thought I’d never see more pain than that. I did. So we moved. We picked Salem because it means Peace. It was one hour from the beach, one hour from the mountains, and one hour from Portland. Maybe by a miracle, it would bring us Peace in our relationship with each other. We needed a miracle. After a short stint of going back and forth on decisions, and a brief residence at the coast, Salem was our new home. I packed with me all my medications. The county mental health center was the lowest of the barrel. For some reason, we ended up in a town that housed most of the states’ mentally/developmentally challenged. And 80% of them were clients at the county mental health center. I hopped from counselor to counselor, always with good reason as to why I was leaving one and choosing another. They continued to give me a handful of pills morning and night, although I insisted they did no good and in fact made some of my symptoms worse. Of course my pleas for real recovery went unheeded. They were punching a timeclock. I knew that and so I made up reasons to stop going. Moving has always been a way of escape. Or to cope. For whatever purpose it suited, the “family” abhorred our decision to continue moving around. The black sheep we could be referred to. The total failures in the family. A disgrace to those who carried our blood. At least we bring something real into the dynamic of the family. The next move was to Rockaway Beach. For four months. Then the isolation was too much so we moved to Netarts. The neighbors were too much. It stank of mold and mildew and rained constantly. The lowest point of my relationship with Michelle occurred in Netarts. Very bad place. My moods were consistently erratic. I was angry, hostile, sad, guilty, depressed, functional, angry, hostile, sad, and depressed. I actually could’ve hurt my newly adopted dog. I was trapped in this tunnel of good and bad, angelic and evil, righteous and sinful, intolerable and commendable. I searched for a way to combine the two polarities and found no way. I would go from happy loving adoration of my new dog to condemnable hate. In seconds. If he pulled away. He was always sick. He too, was on medications. We were very much alike. His medications were not helping him either. When I wasn’t bonding with him I would hold myself back from angrily breaking the bond I spent so much time establishing. Huh. At the time of this writing, he still adores me. The high point in my residence in Netarts was the move away. We moved back to Salem. Every few months we moved. We were tired of moving and were sore. Physically we were in terrible shape. I couldn’t do another move but had to. I had a falling out with the management at the trailer park we lived in. I yelled at him and threw money at him and drove off with a big load. With terrible credit, barely any money, no job, two cats, a dog and 2 birds, it was very difficult to find a place to live. But I did. I loved the apartment because I was by myself, was a fairly functioning person (for about a month) and did not smell any mold at all. I even got a full time job and had planned to stop my Social Security Disability completely. My job was fine, for one day, then terrible and I almost walked out. Then ok again for a couple weeks or so, then I was going to walk out again. I had all my personal belongings in a bag and walked to the bus stop. No one knew. I had purposefully snuck out. The stupid man lied about me. He said something to me that wasn’t true. Accusing me of something I knew I didn’t do. Other people knew it too but he didn’t verify with them. He didn’t want to appear foolishly wrong. So I left. Then at the bus stop, I reminded myself of the things that meant everything to me. Everything. My apartment. Independence. Pets. Money. So I actually bent over and spread my cheeks. I walked back in. Can you imagine how that looks to walk out of a job--no, SNEAK out of a job with all the belongings and then walk back in 20 minutes later? It was a humbling, character-building experience. So I went in, set my stuff down on the desk and pretended the last half hour hadn’t been spent as it had. As if no one could see the chaos inside me, I pretended to be all put together. Saying thank you and your welcome and excuse me when appropriate. Shutting up when someone talks and letting them finish before I speak. Asking appropriate questions. All the while I was in turmoil because I was invisible and knew it. That when people saw me, they saw right through me. Those 90 minutes were painfully shaming. After notifying my supervisor I was leaving, in a bout of tears and sadness, my coworker asked me if I could contract for safety. He worked as a psychiatric nurse for 15 years and had no idea I was a mental patient when I confessed it to him minutes earlier. “Can you contract for safety?” (To contract for safety means to promise not to attempt suicide). Such a caring person. “It is inappropriate for you to ask me here at work that question.” I respond. I leave without contracting for safety. Bless his heart for reaching out. The days and weeks to follow were unbearable. The shame I felt at having failed in a job (again) as well as the guilt I felt over not having enough money to take care of myself and my animals was too much. One night, after totally deleting all my journals in a fit of rage against myself, I sat in the bathtub with a razor. I had always had a strong aversion to pain. Even as a child, pain has always frightened me. I tried but didn’t barely graze my skin. It was all so matter-of-factly done that it could be confusing to the non-mentally ill person. It was attempted pre-meditated murder. After chickening out, I got drunk. The kind of drunk that barely makes it to the bed. Toy, my dog, was concerned. I didn’t care. Or didn’t want to care. I suppose I did care, which was why I shut the bathroom door behind me. Hiding with my razor. Divine intervention must have kicked in. The next morning, waking up with a headache, acid burning in my stomach and very very sorry I was still alive, I turned on the computer for a game of solitaire. My screen saver kicked in and it read, Marquis-style, “HANG IN THERE”. I blinked. Then blinked again. The words permeated my soul. “HANG IN THERE”. I called Michelle. She didn’t write it. I called Mom. She didn’t write it. No one else had access to my apartment. No one except God. It was humbling but not healing enough. I still ached in the soul I didn’t have. My recovery took a turn for the better. Hard to imagine. I went to the library with some resemblance of hope. Something had to be there to tell me what my problem was. It wasn’t Bipolar, certainly wasn’t just depression. It was a character deficit. I knew that more than I’d ever known anything up to that point. And had never heard of anything called Borderline Personality Disorder until then. It was me. Book after book after book. I read me. My life. I had proof. I had proof in the journals I had kept for 15 years, the journals I impulsively deleted out of existence. The library. The internet. The movies. Anything I could get my hands on concerning BPD I had to have. Read. Research. It was scary and exhilarating and exhausting. But I kept going. It’s an interesting experience, to come to the point in life when everything in my life is thoroughly described in details through characteristics, case histories, and DSM manuals. It was all right there. Damn them for not seeing it!! Damn them for not catching it years ago! How could they have let me go so low and for so long with no hope of reprieve, forcing me to either die or discover. Damn their degrees! And God bless the public library. Realizing I was in need of intense therapy and knowing I couldn’t pay for it where I was at, I moved out of my apartment into a 2-bedroom apartment with Michelle. That is where I am now. At the dining room table with Michelle in the shower. I saw a counselor two times. He was cold and unfriendly. I told him about BPD and that I knew I had it. He set me an appointment for another week away. I was desperate for therapy. One week away was an eternity. I didn’t go see him again. There is this therapy called Dialectical Behavior Therapy. DBT. It supposedly works with people like me. Michelle is already using it to live comfortably with me. I can’t afford therapy. I have exhausted my resources financially, through my own effort and the benefits of social service organizations. DBT is out there. It will remain out there. My lifeline of hope to live, not just exist as I had been doing for nearly 31 years, but to really live, in this world. Yet as I write this today, it doesn’t seem much closer than a thousand light years away. Once again, recovery is for others, as life has always been, but it is not for me. God is still here somewhere. And where there is a God, there follows a miracle. Miracles have happened in my life. Just enough to keep me alive and keep me on this side of the criminally insane. Just as there were once meds with my name on it, I believe there, too, shall be another miracle. Shortly after I wrote all this, I moved again. Into my own studio apartment. My counselor recommended me for the DBT group but it seemed so far away. The final suicide attempt was on New Years Day, 2002. Mom, Shell, and I had plans to go to the coast but I cancelled at the last minute because I was extremely depressed. I tried the pills again, this time at much higher doses and a different combination. What I remember about this time is that over the course of two to three hours, everything became yellow. Bright yellow. I looked at myself in the mirror and even I was yellow. I was stumbling around the room to get to the couch. My two cats were looking at me as though I were a stranger, as if I smelled different or looked different to them. I finally made it to the couch. I lied down. I began hyperventilating. It would come every four or so minutes. Then I would gasp for air again. And again. And oh Lord, my body hurt. It hurt more than it ever had. I stayed like this and began getting very cold. I covered up with blankets but the chill was from the inside out. I was thinking that this is it this time. I wasn’t sure if it was supposed to hurt this bad because I always expected an overdose of pills was peaceful and quick. It wasn’t. I began feeling scared. I suddenly felt protective of my body and my organs and made it to the bathroom to throw them all up. Nothing. It was too late. They were in and they weren’t coming out. I did the only thing I could do. I prayed. For forgiveness. For a second chance. And called 911. The ambulance came at once and it was a good thing too. My blood pressure had dropped to 34. It was steadily going down. Then the hospital, the charcoal, the vomiting. Again. This time they said, “You were lucky”. The miracle with my name on it had finally come to me. DBT classes came two weeks later. The classes saved my life. That was the last time I ever tried to attempt suicide. The impulses are still there, always will be, but have gotten fewer and farther between. Depression is a very real illness. Borderline is a very real personality disorder. At the present time, I struggle with both daily. There are good days and there are worse days. The hard part of that is that I never know what kind of day it will be and so I live my life and make my decisions accordingly. It may make no sense to certain people in my life. My attempts to protect others from this type of chaos inside of me has been successful. You Can Email the author at:
Linette Prince |
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